Fantasia 2026 Review: NIGHTBORN, A Mother's Dream Turned Folk Horror Nightmare

Saga’s (Seidi Haarla) blissful fantasies of motherhood are upended when her and her husband Jon’s (Rupert Grint) son turns out to be a bit more difficult than they were expecting in Hanna Bergholm’s sophomore feature, Nightborn. Following up on her 2022 Sundance selection, Hatching, Bergholm establishes herself as one of Europe’s most talented up and coming filmmakers with this duo about the unseen challenges of parenthood and the chaos they can bring.

The baby crazy couple have decided to put their lives in the city behind them to move out to Saga’s grandmother’s cottage in the Finnish woods. Even in its current state, overtaken by the surrounding forest and barely held together by rotting wood, Saga is enamored. She sees the home she remembers from childhood, and all she wants is to hear the pitter-patter of little feet echoing through these halls once again.

It doesn’t take long before her prayers are answered, but the child that arrives is different than the one in her dreams. We don’t really get a good look at the young boy, but we can see that he is unusually hairy and has some other distinguishing features that it seems only Saga notices. While Jon appears to willfully ignore his child’s abnormalities, Saga has no such luck, and the oddity doesn’t stop at his looks.

Things that are supposed to be natural for a mother come with difficulty for Saga. The baby won’t stop crying, and it seems that Mom’s attempt to comfort him only make things worse; nursing isn’t going exactly to plan with Saga’s breasts left bloodied and bruised after every attempt; it feels as though she is doing everything wrong while Jon cruises through this part of their journey unphased. She feels alone, like she is the only one who sees a demon where her child should be, a traitor to the months she spent nurturing its growth in her womb, an enemy.

Nightborn explores the battles and challenges of motherhood that only the child bearer herself can experience, and it can get very, very dark. Bergholm has created a world in which the viewer is privy to moments that are generally just out of frame, the violence of natural birth, the sense of inadequacy that mothers face when those natural instincts either aren’t kicking in or just aren’t enough, the feeling that something is always a little bit wrong, and most of all, the terror that you are failing this new life that depends on you completely for its survival. Motherhood is a horror story.

While these fears have been explored for years in stories and on film, Nightborn puts the chaos in full view of the audience. The birth is shot like a slasher film, the aftermath of her challenging attempts at nursing are straight out early 2000’s torture porn, the loneliness of being the only person to understand her own struggles shows in Saga’s creeping decay from glowing new mother to a worn-down stump of a woman, desperate to reclaim autonomy over a body that has betrayed her. It’s a harrowing experience.

Shot like a fairy tale by cinematographer Pietari Peltola (Dogs Don’t Wear Pants), Nightborn uses light and shadow to evoke Saga’s descent even as those around her question her battles. Grint’s performance as the delusional and pedantic Jon is perfectly irritating, as even he can’t see the struggles Saga is dealing with, close as he is. He’s constantly nitpicking her choices and what he sees as a lack of maternal instinct without realizing that perhaps she’s right to be scared, or maybe the child just needs a different kind of parenting that he cannot see.

A powerful exploration of the physical and emotional struggles of motherhood, Nightborn is one of several film dealing with these themes at this year’s Fantasia, and among the most empathetic. It is a reminder that in parenthood, things rarely go to plan, and failure to adapt can mean exacerbating conflicts that don’t need to exist. Swinging deftly between family drama, folk horror nightmares, and pitch-black comedy, Bergholm and her intrepid leading actress, Haarla take us through the carnal and psychological gauntlet of new motherhood in a shocking and enlightening way. Everyone, it’s time to hug your mothers, they’ve been through some shit.